THE UNIONIST LEADER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18198, 19 March 1921, Page 9

THE UNIONIST LEADER.

It ‘will be read with regret that Mr Bonar Law, the Leader of the Unionist Party in Great Britain and the Coalition Leader of the House of Commons, has been forced, by the state of his health, to resign his Ministerial office. It may perhaps be conceded that Mr Bonar Law never ranked as one of the really great statesmen of the British Empire. If this be so, it may perhaps be not less true that his omission to enrol his name among those who have achieved this distinction was due less to lack of ability than to lack of opportunity—to lack of opportunity combined with a devotion to the interests of his country which impelled him, in the anxious time of his country’s peril, to perform loyally and selfsacrificingly the duties that were assigned to him and to curb his own personal ambitions, whatever they may have been. The association of Mr Lloyd George, a .Radical extremist, and Mr Bonar Law, a suave Conservative, at the head of a Coalition Ministry'may, when it was formed, have seemed to be one that was fraught with all sorts of dangers of which the solution might he found in weak compromises. As |it turned out it was on© of the most fortunate of associations. To the extent to which this was due to the self-abnegation of Mr Bonar Law we may perhaps never know. But it is certain that Mr Lloyd George never had, and never could have hoped to have, a more loyal colleague than Mr Bonar Law proved to be. Mr Lloyd George himself made a striking acknowledgment of this in a speech at the Constitutional Club in the first week in December last, in the course of which he said; ( Mr Bonar Law referred to me as his chief. I am not his chief. We are partners,—equal partners. I have never taken a step of any importance without conferring with him. We have conferred regularly, first thing in the morning after I came down, and many times in the course of the day, and no better partner, no wiser partner, no more loyal partner has any man ever had. He might have played the party game; from the selfish point of view it would have suited him better. He would have had a bigger show, and it would have been his own •without the interference of a troublesome partner. That would have been a selfish game for him to play. The patriotic game meant unity, the subordination of self. He never hesitated, he never swerved, he never doubted. Let mo say it —I say it advisedly—there is no man who has played a nobler part in this struggle than Mr Bonar Law. While Mr Lloyd George has had what he has himself called the, “ bigger show,” Mr Bonar Law has, during the existence of the present Coalition Ministry, had to perform the frequently difficult task of leading the House of Commons in which Mr Lloyd George appears only whan questions of the first importance are under consideration. As a leader of the House Mr Bonar Law has been supremely successful. Mr Asquith has justly said of him that “ though he gave a hard blow it never left any rancour behind.” At all times courteous and imperturbable he commanded the respect and admiration of the most implacable foes of the Government. His qualities alike of mind and of heart made him a valuable asset to the Coalition Government and to the Unionist Party, but politicians of all shades of political feeling will unite in hoping that his health may speedily be restored so fully that the country may be able to count upon a resumption o%fche services which he has been able to render to it.